The Feelies

There's a rather spirited discussion taking place over at Moistworks prompted by a post revolving around the notion of "indie rock" and what that is: an aesthetic, an idea, a model for artists to work outside of the corporate system, or another meaningless title. Within the comments Alex posted a link to WFMU's Beware of the Blog, featuring a TV special I remember seeing in 1985 called "The Hoboken Sound." It's funny to watch now. 1985 was a time when most of the rock music that mattered to discerning young listeners was below the radar of MTV (who at that time still promoted and played music) and was relegated to special programming like 120 minutes. I found out about stuff from searching record stores, zines, seeing bands, and word of mouth. Kids, the eighties in the mainstream were not as cool as you think. It was Ronald Reagan, Madonna, and aging baby-boomers thinking they had to make dance records to stay on top. Look no further than Starship or Stevie Nicks.

Today, everything "indie" or otherwise is supported by something that did not exist then - the very tool that you are reading this post on - the web. So whether it's myspace, Pitchfork, itunes or the Hype Machine, there has been a leveling and democratic effect created by the internet that in the end can be a double edged sword. Too much information and overstimulation. After a while everything starts to feel soulless, and meandering through the onslaught of "special new bands" leaves one feeling empty. That is one of the reasons I retreated to buying old records and posting them here. There are hundreds of blogs promoting whatever is new and it's a great place to hear things in the overcrowded music scene, but in the end, for me there's only two kinds of music: stuff I'm interested in and stuff I'm not. This is purely subjective, and while my taste may run all over the place and at times seem incongruous, it is what I like.

In the mid-nineties, during my brief tenure as a guitar player in bands, my proudest moment came when a ramshackle band called Sidesaddle that I had with my wife got our first gig (at a shithole Williamsburg bar that we took over) reviewed in NY Press by J.R. Taylor who likened our sound the Velvets, the Stones and The Allman Brothers all in one sentence. One of these things is not like the other, right? Wrong, it's all stuff we liked and actually we sounded like none of them, it was closer to a cross between X and the Heartbreakers playing country songs (badly) with some chiming Sterling Morrison rythym guitar. It was a sloppy mess, but a lot of fun. Sadly, I don't have any suitable recordings to present here - you'll just have to take my word for it. The reason I mention this is because in the Hoboken documentary there is some great footage of the Feelies, who for me, a music fan with wide reaching taste, always bridged that gap between The Allman Brothers and the Velvets as well as a handful of other guitar bands that I liked - hard rhythmic and floating guitar lines combined. It may seem preposterous to invoke the name of a biker Southern Rock band, when The Feelies probably had more in common with other Southern Rock bands of their own period (REM for instance) but I always heard something of the Allman Brothers in their sound. I don't know, I smoked a lot of pot back then. I don't anymore, but these records still sound good to me.

Here's a few from The Feelies.

Download:

"Slipping (Into Something)" mp3
by The Feelies, 1986.
available on The Good Earth

"The Good Earth" mp3
by The Feelies, 1986.
available on The Good Earth

"The High Road" mp3
by The Feelies, 1986.
available on The Good Earth

"It's Only Life" mp3
by The Feelies, 1988.
available on Only Life
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BONUS: on the subject of "special new bands"

"Cut My Hair" mp3
by Pavement, 1994.
available on Crooked Rain Crooked Rain: L.A.'s Desert Origins